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I’m not much of stats guru – who has the greatest number of hat-tricks or goals in consecutive appearances is beyond me.
But what is obvious to me is that a large part of what drives Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to ever greater feats on the football field is each other.
Ronaldo made no bones about the fact that he wanted to be seen as the greatest footballer in the world when he was inconsistently seen as such during his time at Manchester United.
Messi was a prodigy when he went to Barcelona as a young teenager and they and their huge supporter base have proclaimed him the best player in the world for most of the time since.
I never saw Pele play – he was already a New York Cosmos Harlem globetrotter-type of footballer by the time I knew his name wasn’t pronounced Peel – but I did get to see Maradona in his prime and those amazing World Cups that he won and lost almost singlehandedly.
Watching Ronaldo and Messi through this season of Champions League and La Liga seemingly goading each other each week with another superlative perfomance, another milestone reached before the other, makes me wonder what would have happened if the careers of Pele and Maradona had overlapped and Pele had been able to do what all Messis do now and leave for the European leagues.
The 1982, 1986 and 1990 World Cups and the European competitions over that decade could have been something to behold with Maradona at Barca and Pele the kingpin of Real.
A lot of Maradona’s self-destruction was preordained – he was simply going to be who he was – but maybe if the title of the world’s best at that time hadn’t come so easily, he might have stayed away from all those distractions because he didn’t want the runners-up medal when Pele was named number one again.
George Best is probably similar; he didn’t really have a nemesis and he still routinely won most things judged on true skill. Perhaps if Johan Cruyff had been that little bit earlier on the scene and if Northern Ireland had been capable of making a World Cup, we would have seen something like what we get from Ronaldo and Messi every week.
It is good to see Juventus strong again – European football needs Italy to challenge the Spanish giants – so I hope that the final is a showpiece of the genius of Ronaldo pitted against a superb defence.
In the meantime the La Liga run-in will be week after week of Ronaldo and Messi routinely doing what no other footballers in the world are capable of, and I hope that we get to see that for seasons yet.
There is no guarantee we will see any one player of their quality for some time, and the fact that we have had the two at once will probably never happen again.
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